


For All The Times She Sang God's Song

by ShinSolo



Category: 30 Seconds to Mars
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Drug Use, Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 21:03:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinSolo/pseuds/ShinSolo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To an outsider, she appeared to be a good Christian woman and the epitome of motherhood. But behind closed oak doors, and concealed from wandering eyes by heavy sage and gold embroidered drapes, the anger and frustration she kept deep inside was released in violent episodes, backhanded slaps to the face, and her own tears</p>
            </blockquote>





	For All The Times She Sang God's Song

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Shannon or Jared Leto, I'm only borrowing their names. The title is a line from the song Blue American, and belongs to the ever lovely boys of Placebo.

It was one of those events all the aspiring dreamed of attending, and all the entertainment world’s big shots dreaded, a semi-formal affair complete with an endless supply of champaign and the ever present strobe of flash photography.  
  
But even though the buzz and fast pace of fame served as a national high for many of Hollywood’s starlets and heart-throbs, that constant lust for stardom and publicity did not ring true for all – for some it was part of the price of success, much like how a constant pestilence of mosquitoes would be part of the price of living in a DET free world with breathable air and a halfway intact ozone layer.  
  
To your left you can see a former fling of yours already half past tipsy and putting on a show for the reporters and TV news crews. And even though you can’t help but cringe and roll your eyes at her immature behavior, you are also thankful that she has drawn most of the cameras attention away from you, leaving you to yourself for a moment, a chance to lower your shields and take a real breath.  
  
But nothing good can last forever.  
  
“Can I get you anything, Mr. Leto?” A female voice asks, and when you look up you realize that while you had been wandering around, silently watching the others, lost in your own thoughts, you had found your way toward the bar.  
  
You offer her a soft smile and a polite ‘No, thank you.’ But before you have a chance to walk away, she counters your refusal with a list of the things she had to offer you. And even though you have never been found of alcohol, for a minute you are actually tempted, but only for a minute.  
  
Growing up, and until the time you had packed your belongings into the back of the battered, piece of shit, you called your car, and headed north west to California with hopes of freedom and dreams of stardom, your childhood had been marked by numerous periods of violence and close calls – periods you still use as reference points when talking about your childhood memories with your brother.  
  
These events were far from random run-ins with bad luck, and they didn’t spawn from multiple sources. Instead, you could blame your mother for each and every one – and with good reason, too.  
  
She had rarely missed a Sunday sermon, and on Wednesday nights, you never had to question her whereabouts. You knew without a doubt that from 7:00 to 8:30 you would be able to find her seated in pew twelve, eyes fixed on the pulpit, legs crossed, and hands folded on top of her Bible in her lap.  
  
To an outsider, she appeared to be a good Christian woman and the epitome of motherhood. But behind closed oak doors, and concealed from wandering eyes by heavy sage and gold embroidered drapes, the anger and frustration she kept deep inside was released in violent episodes, backhanded slaps to the face, and her own tears – liquor induced outbursts that, from either an inability to remember or her own shame, she never once apologized for and always denied the next morning.  
  
Sometimes she would simply sit in the living room, the TV turned down low or muted, crying into her martini, and spilling her problems and secrets to whoever happened to pass through the room, often accusing her sons of not loving her enough.  
  
Other times, they would result in raised voices and slammed doors – arguments that, more often than not, ended with threats of a gun or knife being pulled, and you barricading your mother in her bedroom or the half-bath in the hallway, while Shannon escorted her current fling of the month out the front door. And then, after everything seemed to have calmed down, she would lay on her bedroom floor or try to undo the lock you had put on the kitchen drawer where the knives were kept, muttering threats of suicide under her breath.  
  
It did not matter if it was your birthday, or the opening night of the first school play in which you had managed to snag the lead role and steal the show.  
  
It did not even matter if it was Christmas Eve.  
  
In fact, it had been the Christmas Eve that marked your 16th birthday that had finally driven you to take the leap and move to the other side of the country in the first place, with nothing but five hundred dollars in your pocket and your brother by your side. Louisiana had lost its charm, and you knew that if you did not seek out a new LA soon, you were not going to be able to.  
  
The ironic thing about the whole situation was that the night had began as any normal Christmas would, with holy wreaths and strings of colored lights. You had all hung your Christmas stockings in the living room where you wanted your gifts to be laid out in the morning, tried to sing a Christmas carol that had only ended in laughter muffled behind fire warmed hands, and dug your worn copy of ‘The Night Before Christmas’ out of the box in the attic where it remained every other night of the year.  
  
Everything felt peaceful and everyone was happy. The night even seemed to have the potential of developing into the perfect Christmas, that is until one of your mother’s co-workers had a gift basket delivered with the intentions of spreading holiday cheer.  
  
You could still remember the look Shannon had given you when you discovered that, included in the basket were two bottle of cheap wine. But cheap wine was far from the vodka and tonic she usually drank like water, and Christmas was sacred, right? God would not let anything bad disrupt his only son’s birthday, would he? Then again, you knew more than anyone that the Lord worked in mysterious ways, after all, it had been you who had carved that very phrase into the fireplace mantle in bold, block letter, large enough to read from across the living room three years before everything had fallen apart.  
  
It first started while you were in your room idle picking at a song on your acoustic you had been working on for a while. You could hear her in the hallway talking in a loud voice to someone on the phone. She was laughing and sounded happy, and you took that as a good sign; however, you had not taken into account the handful of hydros she had taken when she finished off the first bottle. You were also not expecting her to throw your door open, calmly walk toward you, take your guitar from your hands, and smash it against your dresser – shattering the mirror on top of it into fragmented diamonds and breaking the guitar at the base of its neck.  
  
“Well, next time, maybe you’ll know better,” she said with a laugh, smiling as if nothing in the world was wrong.  
  
“Are you crazy?” you screamed, your eyes wide as you looked from the broken pieces on the floor to your mother with hateful eyes. “What did I do that was so wrong?!”  
  
But she had already left the room.  
  
You gathered the remains of your guitar and went to find your brother. And there were tears in your eyes, but you knew that if you could just stay in his room until she passed out, what was left of Christmas might still have a chance to be saved. However, when you opened Shannon’s door, his room was empty.  
  
“You think I don’t know? Well think again, Shannon, think again. You and your brother, neither of you give a shit, and now you have the nerve to try and tell me to calm down?” You heard your mother yell from the other end of the house, and even though you could not make out what Shannon had said back to her, the tone of his voice told you that something was wrong, that he was trying to reason with her, talk her down – that he was scared of her.  
  
The mere thought of Shannon actually being afraid of her made your head spin. You could not even fathom what she could possibly be capable of that could evoke that kind of response in him. Was she talking about committing suicide again? Had she managed to pry open the drawer of knives? Had she already done something that could potentially kill her?  
  
A million possibilities had flooded your brain in just the short amount of time it had taken you to make your way down the hall and look around the corner of the wall, but none of them had prepared you for the truth and what you had discovered made your heart stop.  
  
Shannon had his back to the Christmas tree, his fists clenched at his side so tight the veins in the back of his hands had swollen, and even from across the room, you could tell he was trembling. However, aside from his hands, he was completely still, his voice firm and even as he tried to reason with your mother, but she could not be reasoned with.  
  
She stood on the other side of the room, her forehead furrowed, face tear stained. Her bottom lip was bleeding, but to this day you still do not know who or what had been responsible for it. Because at the time, your mind had been to occupied with the fact that in her hands she held a Smith & Wesson .45 and it was aimed straight at Shannon.  
  
All your senses shut down. You could not move, everything was numb. Shannon’s heavy breathing and your own racing heartbeat, were the only things you could hear. The only thought running through your head was the only thing your eyes would let you see – the gun, the way the red and green flashing Christmas lights reflecting off of it, and how the red reminded you of blood and the green mixed with it only served as a reminder that this was really happening, that your mother had finally managed to ruin the one week of the year that you had always held with the most regard, because it held so much significance to you.  
  
“Momma, just think about think this,” Shannon said, and you noticed that his voice was starting to break. His shields were not going to last much longer, and at that time they had been the only thing keeping you both alive. “You don’t really want to do this, and if you do, you’re going to live the rest of your life wishing you didn’t. Come on, Momma . . . Please, just put the gun down.”  
  
“You just don’t understand, Shannon,” she said, her voice higher than normal as if she were talking to a small child or a puppy. “The Bible says that children go straight to heaven. And I know you’re not really a child anymore, but you’re always going to be my baby, you and Jay both. And God’s a merciful God, maybe just this once he’ll take my word for it and let you in, just cause you’re my babies. But even if it’s not that simple, if you’ve been saying your prayers like I taught you to, then you ain’t got nothing to worry about no ways. And you don’t got a thing to be worried about either, baby. Cause I’ll be with you in a second, you’ll only be alone in that place for a little while . . .”  
  
You heard someone crying, but did not realize it was you until you tasted the thick, salty combination of tears and snot mixing together at the corner of your mouth, but at that moment it was one of the last things on your mind.  
  
“I don’t wanna die, mom,” you whispered, but you knew she had heard you. “I just want to stay here with you and Shannon . . . I love you.”  
  
Her face softened a little and it seemed like you had finally said the one thing that could deactivate the walking bomb in her hands, the only piece of metal that could ever kill more people than time itself.  
  
“My baby,” she whispered so softly that you would not have even known she had spoken if you had not been looking directly at her. “I love you, too, baby . . .”  
  
And before you even had time to process her words, your eyes widened and you knew that you had failed, that your one shot at talking her down had horribly backfired. You had faintly remember Shannon screaming and then a blur of motion. But before either of you could do anything, she took the gun off of Shannon, aimed it directly at your head, and pulled the trigger.  
  
“Mr. Leto? Yes or no? Are you sure you don’t want a drink?” the bartender asks, her voice retrieving you from the darkest depths of your mind.  
  
You turn your head and smile at her, and even though it does not even come anywhere close to reaching your eyes, she smiles back at you.  
  
“So, do you want something or not?” She asks again, almost at the point of giving up on you and moving onto someone else.  
  
For a moment you actually feel bad for wasting her time, but you can feel your brother’s eyes on you ever though he is across the room and your back is turned toward him, and the combination of camera flashes and dance floor strobe lights remind you too much of the Christmas lights that were permanently embossed inside your mind.  
  
“Thank you,” you say as you reach into your pocket and pull out a ten dollar bill, gently squeezing her hand as you slip the bill into her palm. And you cannot help but grin at the faint blush that rises in her cheeks, because you know that what you are about to say is only going to cause her to frown and walk away, but you say it anyways. “But I don’t drink.”  
  
You smirk and turn away from the bar, pushing your hair out of your face with the end of your sunglasses and a flick of your wrist. But even though you might seem fine on the outside, your mind still lingers on the fading vapors of that night. You wonder what the exact odds are for a brand new Smith and Wesson to jam the one time the trigger was pulled while aimed at your head. You wonder what would have happened to you or Shannon if she had not changed her aim, if the gun had not proved unreliable.   
  
But even though that night had destroyed whatever faith in God you had, you can still remember the phrase you had carved into the very mantle you had hung your Christmas stockings on ever year, because if none of that had ever happened you doubted you ever would have found the courage to run away to the city of lights, cameras, and action.  
  
And you cannot help but laugh to yourself as you shake your head and say, “Yes, that he most certainly does.”

**Author's Note:**

> All of my writing is influenced and inspired by things that have happened to me in my past; however, this was the hardest one to write. I think we all have those dark memories we wish we could forget, yet we'll always remember. I just find more relief from writing about them than locking them away from the world.


End file.
